ESPN's Seth Greenberg: Job is to tell the truth like he did about 'spoiled' UK freshmen

LEXINGTON, Ky. – After his team’s loss at South Carolina, Kentucky coach John Calipari said his players had an “unwarranted arrogance of a typical team that think they’re better than they are.”

Feb 4, 2017; Gainesville, FL, USA; College basketball analyst Seth Greenberg before the game between the Florida Gators and Kentucky Wildcats at Exactech Arena at the Stephen C. O’Connell Center.

ESPN analyst Seth Greenberg took that comment a step further during the Wednesday morning edition of SportsCenter, blasting the Kentucky freshmen as “spoiled by the process” and “more concerned about themselves than the good of the group.”

Calipari took notice.

“The one thing about Seth, he doesn’t have an agenda,” Calipari said. “He’s not trying to hurt anybody. He’s not going to hurt this program or me. When he made statements…they need to be addressed. If you watched us, you probably would have said the same thing.”

Speaking Friday as part of ESPN’s College GameDay appearance at Rupp Arena, Greenberg did not back off his comments, but he went out of his way to note he likes the Kentucky players and thinks the issues facing the current UK team are not untypical of other Calipari squads or college freshmen in general.

“My job is not to tell people what they want to hear,” Greenberg said. “It’s to tell them the truth. You can be a great kid and not be competitive. You can be a great kid and take plays off. You can be a great kid, because this is the first time you’ve been through that and be more concerned about yourself.”

If Greenberg’s initial comments were truths, they were certainly difficult ones.

“Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard,” Greenberg said Wednesday. “Plain and simple. But there’s a bigger issue. This is part of the problem. You can recruit these one-and-done guys — These guys have been recruited since they’re 13 years old, they’ve been enabled since they were 13 years old. It’s not about Kentucky. It’s about how quick I can get to the league. It’s all about me, me, me. They don’t know how to play hard, they’re not competitive. They can’t maintain an intensity. And quite honestly, John Calipari coaches his team really hard, but they’re more concerned about themselves than the good of the group. And they think that the next step is easy.”

Greenberg went on to say the nation’s best teams, like Villanova, Purdue and Virginia, deserve more attention from media than squads like Kentucky made up of future NBA stars but struggling to find cohesion in college.

By the end of his rant, he had circled back to UK.

“These kids are unrealistic. They think at 13 — they’re not even thinking about college, they’re thinking about how quick can I get to the league? How about being a good college player? How about learning how to play hard, learning how to compete, instead of thinking that it’s a rite of passage? Right now, the hardest-playing toughest team finds a way to win. South Carolina was that team. Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard. That team’s got to learn how to compete together.”

The two UK freshmen made available for interviews Friday differed on their approach to Greenberg’s comments.

PJ Washington said he had not seen the video and had no reaction to Greenberg’s claims. Nick Richards acknowledged he had seen Greenberg’s rant but downplayed its significance.

“I don’t really pay attention to what the media says about us,” he said. “They’re entitled to their opinion. We know what’s going on back here. We’re the ones practicing every day, working out every day, listening to the coaches.”

Greenberg shot down the conspiracy theory that Calipari had directed him to make the original rant but acknowledged in his role as television pundit he says things at times he thinks coaches can use with players as motivation.

That doesn’t mean he thinks Calipari needs any help figuring out the current UK squad though.

“The thing that John has always been able to do is get them to understand that if we win and buy into each other then everyone wins,” Greenberg said. “And the greatest example is obviously Anthony Davis. It takes time to tweak it, and he’ll figure it out. It wasn’t an attack on those kids. It was maybe an attack on the culture of our sport right now.”

Kentucky forward PJ Washington (25) goes in for a layup past the defense of Louisville forward Jordan Nwora (33) during the first half of their game, Friday, Dec. 29, 2017 in Lexington Ky. Kentucky won 90-61.